As I mentioned in the review that I made for Armada I this game has a few flaws, that carried over. The greatest advance is in the positioning of starbases, they can be anywhere, and now planets can be colonised, if they can support life, so no colonizing D class planets. This game also has more non-canon vessels, as well as some of the same problems that we know and love from Armada I

This gme was alright, but in some ways a step down from Armada I. The ships on this game felt small and weak. It also had a little too much creative thinking for my tastes when it came to ship designs.

This game is incredible! Without MODs (special enhancements), the game is great... throw into the mix the enhancements and various "upgrades" that can be added to the game *for free* and you have an experience beyond description. I still play this game regularly and have so for years. I'll never lose my love for A2!

Compared to Armada 1 I loved so much, A2 is a step back in almost every aspect. The intro movie is nowhere to A1. Ingame cinematics are lame. The story lacks elegance. The ships look less 3D even than in A1. The borg design is terrible. The 3D playing area didn't add much to the game either. On the plus side, I must mention warp speed and colonizing planets, those were fun. But while I replayed A1 countless times, A2 is forgettable at best. Thus the ranking: 2.

The play balance, which should be the crux of any RTS game, is well out of whack. As the Federation, a player can quite easily wipe the floor with any other race. Paradoxically, the Borg are one of the weaker races; Until the player can make the advanced Cubes, the Borg are very weak in the early game, where a Cardassian is throwing Galors and the Federation is throwing Akiras around, the Borg gets a slow to build, expensive, Cube. In the same resources, if I remember this right, a Federation player can build five Akiras for one Borg Cube and the Akiras are available at a lower tech level. The Cube doesn't win. The single player campaign, to a word, stinks. The bane of all RTS players is the 'survival mission' where player's tiny force A has to reach point B against overwhelming resistance with no hope of reinforcement or repair. Armada II relies on this horrible abuse of everything RTS stands for far too much. That said, the game is a lot of fun to play and a lot more fun to mod. Armada I was good to mod, but had some crazy texture limits and design limitations. Armada II alleviates most of these but due to it being the weaker game, comparisons would always be made and most of the more talented modders stayed with the original before moving on to other games. It's worth a look, mostly as a demonstration of how many mistakes (as we regard them today) early RTS games made and serves as a useful introduction to modding because it'll simply piss the player off so badly that he'll have no other choice!

The AI was a step down from Armada1 and the campaign was rather blah. That said, the Instant Action(Skirmish) mode was as fun as always, and a second(or third) foe more than compensated for the lesser AI. IMHO, the Federation and Borg were nerfed, especially the Borg; whereas the Klingons and Cardassians made for excellent gameplay - especially against each other. And even the 'nerfed' races served more as a good challenge than frustration. Overall, I give it a 3.8(which I'm going to have to round up to 4.0)

A2 doesn´t have the game balance that Armada 1 has. The defiant class may still be build as one of the weakest ships. Armada 1 has much more flair. Armada 2 was produced by Mad Doc Software who already proved that they have no idea of gameplay. They build Empire Earth II & III and Star Trek Legacy. As with Empire Earth they bought a big franchise name and produced a weak game after another. The good part: Armada II is a realy nice game, if you are using the right mod(s).

I bought this game a while ago now (Shame my new PC can't play it) and I thought that it was absolutly brilliant. A gaming work of art, I used several fan made mods with this game to improve the amount of races, crossovers and maps and played for days at a time non-stop. The only other game that I played for that long was Star Wars KOTOR I and II so if anyone is thinking of buying this game and have the correct PC (ie not Vista Ultimate as I have) BUY IT NOW!!!!!!!!!! andd thats an order.

I played this game beyond the recommended dose, the ability to build micro-manage and command an entire armada of ships from an array of species is an extreamly enjoyable experience. The game may have some flaws but the additional plus of modding any design flaws you come across, makes it less confined and dated to the Paramount canon of star trek. A good game, better than its predesesors.

A great game if you use the right mods, or if you make your own mods(like myself). The stock game is crappy at best. Ship balance sucks hard(A Galor owns a Defiant in like 5 seconds and is stronger than a Sovereign-> wtf?, cubes are weak as hell), textures make you puke and gameplay is fraked up badly(the ton load of special weapons doesn't always help). But if you mod the game and make it ST balanced, with proper shield and hull values, weapon damage and fire rates(mostly for pulse weapons), A2 turns into one of the best ST games ever!

The good: teaming up with others around the globe in a clan to kick some behind. the modability of the game. the creation of custom maps The bad: the lack of total modability. The unplayed: the storyline. let's face it... it's more fun to go out and play against other people than the ai.

First the good things about Star Trek Armada 2. 8472 - The introduction of Species 8472 was interesting and their unique way of growing their ships and stations was very well done, giving much needed variety to the standard base building routine. Colonization - Colonising planets was a nice new gameplay feature and fun to-boot however some kind of territorial bonuses from capturing the planet like Company of Heroes has would have made them more strategically important. Now the bad points: Disregard for RTS - in general the game developers were either completely new to deigning RTS games or disregarded strategy all-together because the stock game does not encourage strategic or tactical gameplay in any way. All ships are the same as the others (special weapons aside) you just pay more for the eye candy of having a horrible low-poly Sovereign instead of a horrible low-poly Defiant. The factions are all horribly designed, with no thought to making each race gameplay a unique experience. I was displeased from the start with the TNG style Borg textures and of all the races to add they decide to add the Cardasians compared to the Dominion. There is however a saving grace...mods are available on various websites which can bring the game much closer to the modern day standard of RTS gaming like the Fleet Operations mod which improves all aspects of gameplay including: graphics, gameplay and most important of all it has a heavy emphasis on strategy.

I absolutely loves this game for quite some time. Eventually when I got into modding my games, I modded this a lot. Some of the ships seemed either under powered or overpowered compared to canon. I really liked some of the non-canon ships, others not so much. All in all this is a great game, and I still have it around.